


Reminiscents

by Cirilla9



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Conversations, Coping, M/M, Mildly Disturbing Themes, Post-Captain America: Civil War (Movie), Soviet Union, c'mon look at the movie, can it be fluffy when it's with winter soldier
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-12
Updated: 2018-04-12
Packaged: 2019-04-22 03:13:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 748
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14299548
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cirilla9/pseuds/Cirilla9
Summary: Somewhere after Civil War and before Infinity War Steve and Bucky visit Romania.





	Reminiscents

**Author's Note:**

> First of all, apologies to any chance Romanians reading this for the image of their country painted in here.
> 
> Besides, whoever wandered in here enjoy this another pointless Stucky one-shot nobody asked for

They stood before some abandoned old fabric that no one has thought to demolish or reclaim for other purposes, open up another business in a perfectly decent building. Old one, all right, but could be renovated, adjusted, made into a shining workplace and provide prosperity to the nation which members Steve saw spending the majority of their time drinking on the streets.

The buildings were overwhelming, factory premises took up large space of the ground, towering over people, obscuring the sunlight. And they were all gaping empty, not one soul moved through them though once they had to be a busy place, considering all the rusting machines standing here and there, some overgrown with grass that spiked from pavement’s big square blocks in many places.

Buildings themselves looked like they were on the very verge of ruin. Windows were broken, old graffiti covered the flaking off plaster planes. In places where bare wall peered over, bricks brittled like rocks under the pressure of erosion. Wind and frost they had in surplus, supposed Steve.

All landscape constituted an image like straight from a nightmare or like Chernobyl after the nuclear catastrophe. Like the buildings were suddenly abandoned one day and never returned to.

Steve felt a chill run down his spine at the sound of distant squeaking. He couldn’t tell from where exactly, perhaps some old loosened metal part swayed at the wind and his enhanced hearing picked it up.

“Can’t believe you choose to live in such a place alone rather than to find me,” he muttered.

Bucky tensed at his side and Steve cursed himself inwardly. Moments before his friend looked almost relaxed, in his gaze was something akin to melancholy as he looked up at the decaying factory.

“I… needed that loneliness. I know you wanted good but I’d feel pressured by your memories of Bucky from before the war. I couldn’t be him then. I didn’t even know who I am. I’ve read about myself in Smithsonian and it was like reading the biography of a nameless war hero. The one I would like perhaps, the one familiar at some level because he liked things like me, he got character similar to mine but it didn’t feel like _me_.

“So I went in some of the countries you don’t really care about unless you fuck something up like with Sokovia case. Not in modern west world, east was an obvious choice but not so far as Russia, that’d be a likely place to look for me. But USSR’s influences stretched further than country’s terrain today so I went for one of the post-soviet bloc.

“It could be any of them. I choose Romania. Maybe because it’s warm here.”

“I needed that loneliness. Some distance, some space to have a better view on many things. Look at that,” he stared at the ruin in front of them, again, with near dreamy expression on his face. “ The relic of the old époque, the monument of its former glory. Just like me.”

Steve would shudder at that confession as well if not for the little smirk playing on Bucky’s lips that made his words sound like Bucky’s and not like the Winter Soldier’s.

Then Bucky looked at him more closely and seem to note his distress because he switched to his old protective self.

“I didn’t forget you, you know. I had that picture with me all the time. It was like an anchor to the reality, to current times and old memories at once. Like a signpost on the way. Just less, heh, taxing than the real person.”

Corner of Steve’s mouth lifted up.

“I am taxing? The hero of the people, the symbol of the freedom, the Captain America?”

“Still that same old Stevie under all this. You could use someone who keeps an eye on you so you wouldn’t harm yourself.”

“I can fight,” Steve felt mildly offended by now.

“Yeah, serum gave you the strength but that doesn’t mean you’re undefeatable. There will always come someone stronger than you. And you keep picking up fights with bigger opponents than you can handle on your own.

“I know now it’s impossible to breed that self-destructive instinct out of you but I can at least be there, at your side, when you do something stupid once again.”

“Like protecting you from the Iron Man.”

“Yeah,” Bucky turned his gaze at the factory once more but it dwelled in the distance further than abandoned premises, “like that.”

**Author's Note:**

> ~Inspired by the old factory in my town


End file.
